Conference to Build the ASI - Report from Angola

Presented by Maria Teresa Santana

Uhuru! Greetings, Sisters and Brothers. I had prepared something to tell you today, but after I heard everything that has been going on, I think we can see all the pieces falling into place. The problems that we face are all the same. They manifest differently in different countries, but they are all exactly the same. So, what are we going to do about it?

I think that these gatherings are for us to try to reason together, to come out with a common strategy and to address our common problems once and for all.

I am going to give a report on Angola that describes the dire situation that we are facing. The reality is that 70 percent of the country's 13 million people live on less than seventeen cents a day. While the poor run away and sniff gasoline, Luanda's elite buy luxury houses and cars, and they have security guards.

Luanda has some of the highest property prices in Africa. It is one of the most expensive places to live.

Angola is Southern Africa's second biggest oil producer, after Nigeria. Critics have charged that high-level corruption has taken away the wealth that should be shared with the people.

For the last four decades, Angola has been at war with itself. There is an implosion of discontent. The people have fallen apart and started fighting each other instead of fighting with the enemy.

I can recall about twenty years ago, as a young girl, I stood up to join the forces of the Angolan Liberation Army. The slogan at that time was, "Angola is the trench of the Revolution in Africa." What revolution was that?

In 1975, after beating and then being struck again by Portuguese colonialists, a so-called progressive movement took power in Angola. We claimed that we had a victorious revolution, that we had done away with the imperialist power, that we were fighting against capitalism, that we were building a socialist state. That was the claim.

We fought bitterly to defend that revolution. The soil of Angola is soaked with blood. The bleeding hasn't stopped — until today.

Last April, over a million people demonstrated in the capital of Luanda to commemorate and celebrate a year without infighting in a majority of the territory. They did so because the Africans in Angola are completely exhausted from fighting. The only concern today in Angola and for the Angolan population is to survive; to be able to live for another day; to be able to struggle for the basic necessities of life. Politics as we know them have been relegated to a secondary stage.

The history and the experience of suppression and repression of progressive voices have landed the country in a position where a majority of the people doesn't want to speak about politics. People are afraid and they don't even know of what. They are even afraid of their shadows. We cannot speak to anyone about the situation because we have to be careful. The walls have ears. You don't know who hears. Everybody is afraid.

Why is all that fear being instilled in a people who fought courageously against the most brutal colonial system in the world? They are so, so afraid and broke, that today it is quite difficult to fight back. Everybody is in denial because the repression was so great and so violent.

Why? For Angola's resources. There is not a resource on this earth that Angola doesn't have. On top of that, we have a very small population. That is another problem. We have a small population because of the killing and war year after year. Our labor force is quite young. The people who are supposed to produce the wealth of the country are so young. They are not ready to take over. So, we have a serious problem. We talk about a revolution, but we need the working class to lead the revolution, and we need to speak about what, exactly, is the African working class?

We don't have an African working class. That doesn't happen just by chance. In a majority of African countries, the working class is receding and just disappearing. Why? We say it is a lack of investment. Africa is not industrialized. If we don't have an industry, of course, we cannot grow a working class.

Africans are unemployed and unemployable. That is a serious problem. We can speak from today until next year and blame all the ills on the African bourgeoisie. That is quite correct. They deserve whatever comes to them. They have a real class self-interest. The bourgeoisie is not there to liberate anybody. That is contradictory to the meaning of being bourgeois.

So, what exactly does the working class do to rise to that particular point where they are able to lead a revolution?

We need to look at the broader picture. It is not just by chance that Africa's development has been undermined. That is a way to prevent the emergence of a real ideology led by the working class. That is deliberate. It is not just by chance. It is not just because we have a bourgeoisie that is anti-national. It is not interested in defending Africa's self-interest.

We have another problem. We talk about the poor peasantry. But, we sometimes fail to conceptualize how Africa's peasantry operates. Africa's economy needs to be re-addressed and re-examined. What kind of economy does Africa have? Does Africa have an economy to speak of? No, we don't. Africa has no economy of its own.

The only economy we have is the peasant economy. The economy is tied to results - the necessities of everything living - to put food on your table and clothes on your body and to be able to survive. And women sustain most of that economy.

We need to understand that in Africa these are direct attacks on African women. It is a process of impoverishing and relegating Africa to a situation where we are not even able to organize our so-called economy. So, we have those conflicts that people call "civil wars."

The wars are a result of being unable to feed ourselves. That is literally the reality.

Although production has doubled and tripled in many countries over the last two decades, we seem unable to feed ourselves. Why? It is because the economic process has been destroyed.

We are producing everything that we do not need. We are producing raw materials. Africa is being allocated that particular role in the international capitalist system. We are only there to have our raw materials exploited. That is our role.

People talk about this new paradigm of globalization and their liberties. You can go to Asia and China to the sweatshops there. Capital is moving, new factories come up and people are able to get workers. For Africa, that is not viable. Africa has become the dumping ground. If it were the other way around, Africa would get control of its own resources, and the entire capitalist system would collapse.

While we are talking about it, we need to refer to these particular fundamental issues that we need to deal with. These are the fundamentals of our relationship with the West. These are the fundamentals that we need to change. These are the fundamentals that the revolution has to be built on. These are the fundamentals by which we are able to capture the invisible hand and also the visible hand. We have to capture both of them.

My mother just came last night and I didn't even have the time to go over this report because we barely had been able to talk about family and relations and what is happening. What is new and what is old and the world situation as it were. But, what will come out, as the brother from South Africa just said, is the problem that we have with dying. People are dying like flies, and this is really terrible. And one of the things that she was telling me is that modern women are growing more and more infertile and people are beginning to have concerns. What is happening? Why is this? Very young women are very infertile, and nobody knows the reason why. But we can just guess what it is. We know.

We are in this warfare, and we don't know what is being thrown at us. The reality is that infertility and killing of our population is wiping us out, and that means that our capacity to resist and to fight back is also diminished. The urgency to organize is even more urgent. We cannot afford to play around because our very existence is at stake. Thank you. Uhuru.